Break Point
by Spencer5460
Summary: Blair's chest is on fire. It would have been more merciful for Alex to shoot him. Just one clean shot and oblivion would come swiftly. Not this burning agony, like a heretic must suffer as his flesh sizzles at the stake. A thousand memories wash over him, along with countless recriminations.


**Break Point**

The instinct not to breathe underwater is so strong that it overcomes the agony of running out of air. No matter how desperate the drowning person is, he doesn't inhale until he's on the verge of losing consciousness. At that point there's so much carbon dioxide in the blood, and so little oxygen, that chemical sensors in the brain trigger an involuntary breath whether he's underwater or not. That is called the 'break point.'

 _The Perfect Storm: A True Story of Men Against the Sea_ by Sebastian Junger

An animalistic strength holds Blair beneath the surface of the fountain's chilly water - a power enhanced by adrenaline and fury. But he knows it's fueled by confusion and fear, as well. He'd recognized it in Alex Barne's lovely eyes the instant she'd come to his office and pointed her gun at him. He'd been terrified. A Sentinel out of control. Even though Blair had shown more bravery lately than he'd ever figured himself capable of, he was no hero. Not like Jim, anyway.

"You want to know how I really got the Sentinel senses?" Alex had asked him. "Solitary confinement in prison. I thought I was going crazy. It wasn't until I met you that I realized what I'd become."

Despite his fear, Blair had tried to put into practice what he'd learned from following a detective around everyday for the past three years. Stay cool. Hold on to your wits. Keep the aggressor talking and look for an opportunity to get the upper hand.

"And look how you used this gift," he'd pointed out. "What a waste."

It was no comfort to Blair that Alex admitted that killing him was the one thing she really didn't want to do.

For reasons known only to Alex, she hadn't shot Blair then and there. At first, Blair had latched onto the hope that she'd change her mind - that she wouldn't kill him after all. Maybe she'd feel a tug of the humanity and have second thoughts. Maybe she'd be satisfied with just scaring him half to death. He had several minutes to think about what might be going through Alex's mind as she marched him out to the fountain in front of the anthropology building. When they'd stopped at the concrete ledge, realization had dawned. Alex hadn't intended to shoot him in the first place - she'd wanted to drown him. Feel him squirm in her hands.

Although he usually enjoys being around water, Blair has never learned to swim. Being submerged has always unnerved him. Maybe this is why. A premonition of this very moment. His dying would take longer than a clean shot through a vital organ, but it would be torturous and prolonged. _Why do you hate me so much? What do you have against me?'_ He'd wanted to ask. Did he already know the answer? Instead he'd said, "You're better than this."

"Oh, I don't know," Alex responded coolly. "A million in cash for one night's work doesn't seem so bad. How much do you make slaving away in that closet you call an office? You don't even have a place to call your own. And how about your boy Jim? How much does he get paid for being shot at or blown up?"

"You don't get it, do you. There's a higher good," Blair pressed as he looked around, wondering if anyone might chance to wander by and if even _he_ believed any more in his own lofty ideals.

"You have such quaint notions, Blair Sandburg," Alex had laughed. A pretty sound to convey such twisted thoughts. "You've obviously been reading too many comic books."

Alex may have been right. Naomi had always said her son followed the beat of a different drum. Maybe his fascination with Sentinels and their protective powers had made him lose touch with cold, hard reality. What was the point of any of it? Jim had been angered by what he'd read of Blair's dissertation. 'A violation of trust,' he'd called it. Blair's own "Blessed Protector" had pushed him away.

Alex had grabbed Blair with uncanny speed and pushed him forward, forcing him under the water.

ooOOoo

With maddening frustration, Blair is easily overpowered. How long can he hold his breath in the murky water?

 _Between thirty seconds to one and a half minutes of oxygen deprivation, consciousness fades. At the one-minute mark, brain cells begin to die. But Jim won't be charging to Blair's rescue any time soon. He won't even be missing him._

Blair struggles against Alex's hold on him in desperation, like a fish on a hook. But while the dangling fish fights for the water, Blair longs for life-saving air. For a brief instant he feels her hand slip but then his opportunity is lost as her fingers tighten in his hair. Deprived of oxygen, his strength wanes. A match flares in his lungs and a fire begins to spread from one alveoli to the next.

 _At three minutes, neurons suffer ever more extensive damage and lasting brain damage becomes likely._

Blair's chest is on fire. _It would have been more merciful for Alex to shoot me_. _Just one clean shot and oblivion would come swiftly. Not this burning agony, like a heretic must suffer as his flesh sizzles at the stake._ There seems little difference between a fire that consumes living tissue from the outside versus this flame that torments him from within.

A thousand memories wash over him along with countless recriminations. His mother waving from a car window as she drives off, an endless succession of cold dorm rooms and studio apartments. Nights spent buried in books that seem more dependable than friends. The memories change direction and shape like ripples. There's a rush as Jim Ellison pushes Blair against a wall, he feels the strength and comfort of Jim's arm as they catch him after fighting off the fire people. Blair sees the hurt on Jim's face after reading Blair's paper.

 _If holding my breath is killing me, maybe breathing in won't be so bad,_ is his last thought before his larynx spasms.

He discovers then the only thing more unpleasant than running out of air is breathing in water. Fluid floods his lungs and ends any waning transfer of oxygen to his blood. The clock runs down. Half-conscious and enfeebled by oxygen depletion, Blair's world fades to black.

 _After five minutes, death becomes imminent._

ooOOoo

Blair floats peacefully. Painlessly. He feels nothing at all until a gentle breeze, like a lover's sigh, caresses his face.

Blair's chest spasms again but this time he takes in deep gulps of air, dizzy with relief that the burning pressure is gone. The air is fresh and sweet, the way it is deep in a forest. He's no longer being held under water. Instead, he's stretched out on a soft mound of earth.

"I've come to bear witness," he hears a man intone.

Blair opens his eyes slowly. Gray shapes solidify to form a familiar figure in a long, ragged coat standing over him. The man's rusty hair and beard are in need of grooming but his eyes are warm and welcoming. A comforting presence in the vague darkness that surrounds him.

"Gabe! Man, am I glad to see you." Blair says and maneuvers himself to a cross-legged sitting position. He's no longer wet. Or cold either, for that matter.

"And I, you, my friend."

"What happened?" Blair asks. "I thought I was a goner."

Gabe smiles. "When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you."*

"I get that. You came along at just the right time. I was sure I was dying." Blair pulls his hair back with both hands in an unconscious gesture and takes in another full breath. It feels heavenly. Then he sighs, his relief tainted by bitterness. "But maybe I deserved it. Not that I'm not grateful or anything, Gabe, but I should have known better than to get involved in something over my head. And I'm not just talking about the fountain."

"The heart of the discerning acquires knowledge, for the ears of the wise seek it out,"** Gabe says, not unkindly.

"Spoken like a true professor," Blair acknowledges. He inhales deeply again the rich air. Strange how it reminds him of being in a rainforest. In fact, he doesn't feel like he's at the University Commons at all. He can't seem to get his bearings in the darkness.

The last time Blair had seen the man who calls himself Gabe - a professor whose real name is Blake - he was laying close to death in the hallway of the Cascade police station, a victim of a gunshot wound. Megan had assured him that Gabe's condition had stabilized later at the hospital, but then he'd disappeared from there just like he had from Fordham University where he'd apparently taught ancient history.

When the Cascade PD had run a background check, they'd discovered that a homeless man matching the eccentric professor's description had died of exposure in the harsh Chicago winter some time back. But how could that have been Professor Blake since he'd shown up in their very building? Even for the Major Crimes unit, the background check had raised more questions than answers that day.

Gabe and Blair had shared a hot meal on the police department floor. Gabe had declared that he was an angel. That Harold Drake had been 'gathered up.' "I use his body to walk among men," Gabe had explained. Of course, no one in the department had believed the dirty and disheveled, yet harmless man's claim. Least of all, no-nonsense Jim.

Blair had brushed it off at first too, but his studies had led him to believe there was more to this world than what could be easily explained.

Like Guides and Sentinels.

Even now, Blair thinks he should be asking questions like, what was Gabe - make that Harold Blake - doing here, but the weight of Blair's guilt overwhelms him, redirecting his thoughts. "I don't know what I was thinking getting involved with Alex and not even telling Jim."

Before she'd tried to drown him, Blair should have guessed what Alex had been experiencing. He'd seen the same things in Jim the past few days. Territorial aggression, with Blair himself at its core. But instead of trying to diffuse the situation, Blair had pushed it.

His reasoning sickens him, but he can't deny the truth. He'd actually _enjoyed_ the tension, damn it. He'd never been the subject of jealousy before. It had made him feel powerful and important for the first time in his life. That is, until his world had come crashing down.

By the time Blair had tried to make amends for his poor judgment, fierce pride - both his and Jim's - had gotten in the way. His own parting shot still rings in his ears. ' _If you got to hang on to it - you know where to find me.'_

Gabe seems to read his mind. "There's only One who is perfect, my friend. Don't judge yourself so harshly."

But Blair isn't so ready to let himself off the hook. While dying softens the edges of some memories, it brings others into sharper focus. " _What are the chances of two sentinels appearing in Cascade at this time, right? And falling in with you?_ " He remembers Jim saying, along with his flippant reply.

" _There are no coincidences. "Maybe it was fate, maybe it was synchronicity - I don't know - a time/space continuum converging together at this point, at this moment. This is completely beyond our comprehension."_

Or was it simply arrogance, Blair now thinks to himself.

Blair shakes his head and his curls loosen. His brush with death has fed an overwhelming need to come clean. The way his life had gone up to until then, he's not surprised a wayward angel carrying a scent of stale cigarettes and fast food grease would be his confessor.

"I shouldn't have played with fire. I knew all about Jim's trust issues. But Alex was confused and I thought I could help her, too. Me - the Guide with all the answers. Until she showed up in my office with a gun, I hadn't been honest with myself about how dangerous she really was." Or how much he had contributed to her turmoil. So much, as it turned out, that she had wanted merely dead, she had wanted him to suffer.

"Alex said she'd spent time in solitary confinement," Blair recounts, even though Gabe would have no idea what he was talking about. "That type of punishment for someone like Alex could only have been torture."

"And that's when her Sentinel abilities emerged," Gabe stops him.

Blair gapes at Gabe, astonished. "How do you know . . . .? "

"Alex's path is her own choice, Blair," Gabe continues, despite Blair's unfinished question and his look of shock. "She'd been sent other Guides, but she choose not to recognize them. Voices crying the wilderness. You were her last chance."

Gabe looks up and speaks as if addressing an unseen audience, "Such are the paths of all who pursue gain dishonestly; it takes the lives of those who profit from it.***"

"Are you talking to _me_?" Blair looks around seeing nothing but the amorphous dark.

"Yes, Blair," Gabe looks back to him. "Your wisdom as a Guide is renown to those who matter. Your courage is legendary. You're the only one who doesn't recognize your own value. You look to others for validation when all you need to do is look inside yourself."

Blair blushes. He's never felt particularly special before. He mostly considers himself a pain in the ass. A status he's accepted in the same way he accepts the jibes from the guys in Major Crimes.

"Alex doesn't want anyone to Guide her,' Gabe continues. "Not the way Jim does."

"Jim doesn't want me as a Guide either any more I'm afraid." Bright pain returns to his chest, more powerful than his lungs' demand for oxygen.

"He needs you, Blair. This may be the moment he understands how much. You need each other."

What could Gabe know? ' _I'm here to work a miracle,_ ' he'd had told Blair once. If only that were true, Blair thinks, since it would take a miracle to put his life back together. To bring Jim back to him and trust him again. But for now he's just tired. He wants to lie down and sleep for a week.

Blair sinks to the ground and coils into himself. He's stunned to find that his body has taken the form of a wolf. _What the fuck is happening?_ He looks up to see if Gabe can explain it, the way he's been able to answer so many other things, but Gabe is gone. Blair is all alone in the mysterious darkness. _How crazy is this?_ _Maybe I'm dead after all._ The hopelessness and finality of the idea claws at his heart.

 _This can't be happening. This can't be happening. This can't be . . ._

He lays his head back down and thinks on all the mistakes he's made in his life. All his regrets and the things he's left unsaid. His biggest mistake is Jim. He'd been given a chance in a million and he'd blown it. An unfinished dissertation means nothing in comparison to the bond they'd had.

 _What do you mean, "sorry"? Wait. This isn't over._

Soft sounds nearby break through the misery of his thoughts. Twigs crackle, leaves are brushed aside - the stealthy movements of a wild animal making its way through dense foliage. Blair thinks he should be afraid but he's not. His natural curiosity tugs at him. Both a blessing and a curse. He gets up and pads his way toward the sounds. The shadows give way to a lush jungle. A path through the brush that had been hidden from his human eyes appears before him and he follows it to clearing.

Blair has the odd sensation he's been here before.

A black jaguar emerges from the jungle - immensely powerful, exquisitely beautiful. Blair stands frozen, watching. The jaguar slowly turns to him, intelligence burning in its ebony eyes. Strangely, the wild animal doesn't provoke fear, but rather familiarity. A kindred spirit. He feels it call to him in a language of the heart, a desperate pleading.

 _Come on, Sandburg. Come on, damn it!_

There's a pounding in Blair's chest, a thundering in his heart. The big cat pulls at him like a magnet and he steps tentatively toward it. The closer they come to each other, the more powerful the pull becomes, like water rushing toward a cliff, becoming an unstoppable force as it plunges off the edge. The two animals rush toward each other and collide in mid-air, becoming one in a flash of light.

A firm compression bears down on Blair's chest. Water clogs his throat as another set of lungs forces air in, breathing for him. He opens his eyes and the jungle is gone. He's human again and doesn't know whether to be relieved or disappointed. But the jaguar is gone, too, and the loss chokes him more than the water that had previously filled his lungs. An EMT hovers over him, adjusts a mask on his nose and mouth. The mask makes breathing easier.

He hears familiar, muffled voices nearby. Sobs, reassurances. _For me?_ _If I'm not dead after all, only one person could have saved me._

ooOOoo

"You know, Chief, if you want to meet nurses, there are easier ways."

Jim appears in the doorway of his hospital room. Cocky but hesitant, too. Blair hadn't imagined it. Jim had been there to save him.

"That's great, man, that's great. Now you tell me." _Damn, Blair. Is that all you can think to say? Some BS about nurses?_ "Thank you," he murmurs.

"I couldn't let you die. You owe your last month's rent," Jim tells him.

"Oh, that's right. Sorry about that," Blair jokes back. It's what they understand, a harmless back and forth as familiar and comforting as morning coffee.

But then the mood in the room changes. "You doing alright?" Jim asks, and Blair senses he's not just asking about his physical recovery. It's so rare for Jim to initiate intimate conversation that Blair seizes his chance.

"Yeah, you know. I'm all right. I saw it," he says hesitantly. "The whole out-of-body experience. It wasn't like that classic light-at-the-end-of-the-tunnel thing. There was just a jungle. I was this wolf, and I was running towards a black jaguar. Then we collided, and there was this big burst of light. Next thing I knew, I was spitting up water. The doctors are trying to tell me it's some type of an endorphin rush when the body starts to shut down, but it was...

"The same image. I saw the same image." Jim says. The expression on his lean face is incredulous.

"You had the same vision?"

"Yeah. It was Incacha who guided me how to bring you back," Jim explains.

 _Incacha. Of course._ The Shaman who'd led Jim to Blair in the first place _._ For Blair it was Gabe. A different kind of Guide, but no less magical. Blair suddenly realizes that wasn't so much that he'd had died in those minutes under the water as that he'd been reborn. He'd been set back on his path. He may have hit some bumps in the road, but it wasn't his final destination.

Blair laughs, feeling lighter than he has in months. Gabe was so right. The hardest part of a miracle is making it look like an accident. Someday he'll tell Jim about Gabe, but not right now. There's only so much one can take in, and Blair has met his breakpoint the time being. He's alive, Jim is here and not upset with him. Jim saved his life - again. Even more, that they've crossed some type of metaphysical barrier together. He doesn't quite understand it, but he's going to work on it.

"I can't believe this. Einstein said the greatest experiences we can have are the ones with the mysterious," he says. "We are definitely there, my brother. Come on in, man," Blair wiggles his fingers enticingly at his Sentinel. "The water's nice."

How many miracles does one get in a lifetime? He doesn't want to mess this one up.

 **FIN**

'Be not forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.' Hebrews 13.2

* Isaiah 43

** Proverbs 18:15

***Proverbs 1:19


End file.
